Iran conducted a highly visible test of mid-range and long-range ballistic missiles today; many reacted by declaring it proof that they’re crazy, when in fact it’s proof that they’re not.

…even as Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials have dismissed the possibility of attack, Tehran has stepped up its warnings of retaliation if the Americans—or Israelis—do launch military action, including threats to hit Israel and U.S. Gulf bases with missiles and stop oil traffic from the Gulf.

Think about it: For the last five years, Iran has literally had a gun pressed into its guts - a gun in the form of the most powerful military in the world. And over the last year or so, the person pressing that gun into their guts has been yelling about “obliterating” them or “eliminating” them, while another assailant - Israel - makes similar demonstrations of force.

So there you are, you’re Iran; you’re the guy in the dark alley with someone pointing a potential murder weapon at your head and promising your days are numbered … and you have a gun too.

And today, Iran just showed its gun. After having Israel conduct war games and John Bolton suggest that Bush would make sure we’re good and entangled in a military solution to Iran’s nuclear program before he left office, Iran has responded by saying, “I can hurt you too. Back off.”

It doesn’t make it look any safer. Hopefully, it makes it look saner.

Obama’s response has been to urge the President to actually address this with direct talks with Iran, just like in the good old Cold War days, rather than getting half-hearted Europeans and State Department water carriers to handle it.

McCain urged for a missile shield. I think that is completely without merit if it’s done like the Bush administration has handled the shield - namely, breaking all treaties pertaining to it and sparking an arms race before the thing is even able to protect us. Considering I expect no less from McCain, and that his plan doesn’t even begin to address the root of the problem of Iran, it’s no shock I think Obama has the better solution.

Iran needs to be talked to; convinced to put the gun down and back away from the podium of scary talk. Not threatened further by a gun that, in the case of our missile shield program, isn’t even loaded.

That, after all, would be crazy.

Regardless of whether candidate is game for a mudfight, the chum-slingers in print are all too pleased to amp up the character abuse, as two developments in the media surrounding the 2008 Election proved today.

Aimed at Obama are veteran operatives of the same outfit that took up the Swift Boat Vets’ cause in the interest of GOP political victory - conservative public relations firm Creative Response Concepts, the print arm Regnery Publishing, and right-wing operatives Jerome Corsi and David Freddoso.

Corsi and Freddoso are both releasing books in the interest of being “fair and balanced” - which is to say they intend to present every harmful rumor about Obama’s career in the most venomous and inflammatory way possible. The publisher in charge of Freddoso’s book as much as says so:

By highlighting negative aspects of Obama’s record and background, Ross says, Freddoso may compel others to offer more critical coverage of the Democratic nominee.

I’m sure this comes as a relief to the millions of Americans who, so sick of the brief glimpses at issue-based politics we’ve had so far, long for a return to the media’s obsession with matters like people’s pastors, beer preferences and bowling scores.

Corsi and Freddoso will surely provide plenty of fodder for the networks to ruminate over the pathetically irrelevant relationship of Obama to “radicals” and “radical agendas.” Their scurrilous tone will at the very least make the well of Obama’s proffered fresh approach to politics seem bitter. Expect periodic downpours of sneering insinuations about Obama and the Weathermen, and liberal - no pun intended - mention of the review of Obama’s voting record, a study courtesy of Freddoso’s own magazine, a periodical constitutionally devoted to destroying the reputation of political opponents.

But even John McCain is not immune to the media’s lust at echoing the voices from the fringe. Apparently some reporter at Fortune magazine led McCain’s chief adviser - the sociable, substantially soiled Mr. Charlie Black - into admitting that a terrorist attack would boost McCain’s chances.

It was hardly shark fishing on the Orca to get Black to take bait. The reporter got Black chatting about McCain’s surprise win in New Hampshire, in the same breath as talking about the Senator’s national security credentials:

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.”

What’s written out of the next part is glaring evident; the reporter following up - meaning, scenting blood in the water and going for the famously weak Black’s leaking mouth:

As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

“Concedes” and “raise the issue” meaning put words in the fellow’s mouth, then pressuring him into admitting it. I don’t necessarily mind that kind of aggressive follow-up, but in this instance, it’s not follow-up, it’s a trick to get something provocative in print.

As venal and hollow as I find John McCain now, I strongly doubt the man wants another terrorist attack - Black, though he represented mass-murdering African dictators, either. Yet that’s precisely how things are being presented.

And this is my problem with both assaults on the candidates - not only are they provocative, they are also unfair and stupid in the extreme.

In the case of the CRC-promoted, Regnery-published, shill-written books on Obama, it is unfair because while all politicians must work with all manner of people - even some they disagree with; even the unsavory - not all politicians are inspiring. Obama is.

And while I think he has more integrity than the standard stock of politicians, I do not hold any illusions that he has had to cut deals, move money and make allies that would dismay many voters. Such is politics. Not everyone need be Hillary Clinton, but just about everyone has known a Tony Rezko or Bill Ayers.

That Corsi and Freddoso pass off their agenda of destroying a politician from a rival party as some kind of “need for perspective” is preposterous.

Similarly preposterous is the masquerade of shock by the media at Black’s comments. Unless that shock is, “I can’t believe he was so stupid as to walk right into that” - in which case, they haven’t been following Black or the McCain campaign very closely - then it’s the worst acting job this side of a sixth grade talent show.

Who doesn’t know that a terrorist attack would benefit the GOP in the polls? Everyone from TIME magazine to David Cross, HuffPost bloggers to the Pentagon has acknowledged that as soon as the bombs start going off, loads of Americans cozy up to the Republicans. There’ve been movies made about it, books written about it, endless hours of punditry yammering on it.

Is it news that Black leapt through the hoops of putting the obvious pieces together? That John McCain is a Republican, and terrorist attacks help Republicans in the polls, thus a terrorist attack would help McCain?

Under customary circumstances, these kinds of unfair distractions would be merely offensive. Given the world we live in, they’re travesties.

We require not only a President, but a political atmosphere, that has the focus and energy to combat crises as radical as any we’ve faced since World War II: Genocide in Darfur, ethnic cleansing in Palestine, nuclear brinksmanship in the Middle East, proliferation of uncontrolled nuclear, biological and chemical weapons from the former USSR, the rise of a belligerent Russia, the rise of China, the decline of the dollar, the pathetic dependence on oil, the agonies of human trafficking world wide, the dangerous senility of our public school systems, and on and on, from Pakistan’s tribal zones to the perils of a surge in American inner city gang violence.

Instead we get defamation and dumb-bell, melodramatic gotcha journalism.

It was said by Alexis de Tocqueville that, “In Democracy, people get the government they deserve.” Right now, we’re getting the government the sensation-drunk media allows us to have.

Let us hope that in November, the people realize they deserve better than that.

The most significant military genius of our times has been appointed to the most significant command in the world, as Army General David Petraeus was picked today by the President to head up CENTCOM. This is more than just a change of the brass on the shelf. This is the beginning of a new era of American war fighting in the toughest region of the world.

Petraeus is a figure of change because he is our American Pompey. Pompey was the Roman general who used a surge of resources and political will to win a tough war in the 60s BC not only by fighting better, but by winning the peace.

Pompey brought down an epidemic of piracy in the Mediterranean that made al-Qaeda look like the Falun Gong; his keys to victory were a phenomenal aptitude for organizing despite lean forces and a willingness to exercise amnesty over violence.

Petraeus has introduced the same to the American war in Iraq: He had to struggle as hard against a threadbare and mercenary Pentagon to get his Division, the 101st, into place in Iraq for the invasion as he did against Saddam’s forces, a conflict well recorded by Rick Atkinson’s “In The Company of Soldiers.”

Petraeus then took a page from Pompey’s book when, as Commander of Coalition Forces in Iraq, he masterminded and executed the “Sunni Uprising” - or, as it could objectively be called, the bribery and persuasion of our chief insurgent enemy to switch sides. Just like Pompey’s follow-up to the pirate campaign found him marching against the Greek King, Mithridates, buying off bandits and persuading towns to fly Rome’s banner in exchange for political agency, Petraeus offered the same to the Sunni provincial leaders. Often this demanded he undercut the Iraqi government in Baghdad, and even fly in the face of stated Bush administration policy.

In fact, if Petraeus, like his predecessors, had complied with Bush’s oath that we “do not negotiate with terrorists” and refused to recognize the militias as the dominant political forces on the ground, we would not have any measure of what success we have today. He cut deals with local leaders, feeding them funds long stymied by the corrupt Maliki regime set on starving them out. He worked out a backroom cease fire with Moktada al-Sadr, in direct defiance of Maliki. This has led to an unparalleled amount of public works in Iraq that actually stick. And, most importantly to the American military enterprise against its dogged enemies, it has allowed him to systematically focus on those opposed to our interests - first, al-Qaeda, and now, al-Sadr.

So what will Petraeus bring to the total command over Africa and the Middle East that comes from CENTCOM leadership? The same ingenuity and defiant dedication to success that Pompey brought to his total command of forces in the same region:

He will opportunistically circumvent stale, stubborn administration policies preventing him from talking to our enemies. He will focus on the core objective of counter-insurgency - eliminating the public support for the bandits - by whatever means necessary, including armistices and foreign aid. And he will continue to show a brilliance for organization - for making do with little and retaining the initiative against an adversary that is, by definition, unpredictable.

Pompey’s adventures were cunning above all else, and never let the stupidity of his government obscure his mission. His actions led to an era of domination that was the foundation of the future “Pax Romana” - the Roman epoch of prosperity, influence and military supremacy.

Petraeus, our Pompey, has the cards stacked against him too: A callow political leadership, a redoubtable enemy and awful terrain.

From what he has shown so far, his achievements will be no less legendary.

Some days, it doesn’t pay to get up in the morning. Others, manna and shekels rain from on high, but you’ve got holes in your pockets. This would be one of those days of overwhelming abundance, smothering my fatigue-enfeebled self under a political cornucopia.

Iran. Nukes. Al-Sadr. Petraeus. Obama. A new vision, old threats, good times.

I’ll give you the trimmed down version of this momentous day, with quotes and an offhand comment or two, and then go nurse the helium-headed insomnia I’ve got going on.

Iran wants nuclear fuel because they can get no energy from the copious amount of oil they have but cannot refine. Or they’re building a bomb. Whichever, they’re doing it fast, with 6,000 new centrifuges. Yes, that is a lot.

Iran has about 3,000 centrifuges operating at its underground nuclear facility in Natanz - the commonly accepted figure for a nuclear enrichment program that is past the experimental stage and can be used as a platform for a full industrial-scale program that could churn out enough enriched material for dozens of nuclear weapons over time.

He called the development a “breakthrough” and the “beginning of a speedy trend to eliminate the big powers” dominance in nuclear energy.

Everybody except Russia is less than enthused.

Obama suggested talking to Iran about Iraq too, because someone has to give them a talking to about acting like its cool that they’re a major broker in the nuke market, and besides, they run Iraq anyway. They got appointed by the Dawa Party now ruling Iraq back in ‘79, now we install the Dawa Party to be better neighbors than Saddam was. It’s June Cleaver Diplomacy.

“I do not believe we are going to be able to stabilize the situation without that” said Obama, adding that a plan for US troop withdrawals was needed to force Iraqi factions to work together.

“I think that increased pressure in a measured way, in my mind, and this is where we disagree, includes a timetable for withdrawal. Nobody is asking for a precipitous withdrawal.”

I look forward to reviewing the whole kit-and-kaboodle of the Petraeus/Crocker briefing audio, tomorrow. The last time was such fun, with pictures, so that you can see that though all the Congressmen sound alike, they are each a different kind of homely.

Petraeus, surprisingly, didn’t advocate a precipitous withdrawal either.

Petraeus said his approach takes account of the fact that security gains achieved over the past year are fragile and reversible, and he said it is intended to “form a foundation for the gradual establishment of sustainable security in Iraq.” But he did not say when he thought that goal would be reached.

“Withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the progress of the past year,” Petraeus said.

Conclusion: Apparently the Democrats and Petraeus are in agreement. Neither wants an early withdrawal that will shatter the fragile peace and prosperity.

Moktada al-Sadr agrees with that too. No precipitous withdrawal for him.

[al-Sadr] urged the government to “demand the withdrawal of the occupier or a schedule for its withdrawal from our holy land.”

As for the fragile security that ruptured last week at a stamp of al-Sadr’s foot, Moktada is tired of getting shot at.

“I call on the Iraqi government, if it exists, to work to protect the Iraqi people, stop the spilling of its blood, and the abuse of its honor,” al Sadr said in the statement.

“If it exists.” Oh, snap!

In any event, even our former arch-enemies don’t want us to leave too hastily.

Sounds like a plan. Gee, it’s easy for people to get along.

The moment that nation at large has been ignoring is drawing nigh - signs of the Petraeus strategies fractures are now showing, as violence in Iraq flares anticipating the end of the Surge. That this would happen was not, for those in the know, in doubt. The Surge’s most critical objective - the establishment of an enduring, functional government in Baghdad - wasn’t even given a ghost of an effort by the Green Zone aristocracy currently taking up space in the Iraqi parliament. Without that base of support intact, it is inevitable that the house of cards is going to fall once there aren’t enough American hands to hold it up. And, just as the strategists all feared, now that the clock has run out on the Surge, every Iraqi with a gripe is hitting the streets to ensure a hot summer comes in spring.

Now all that remains to be seen is how the different factions here in America will spin it. But before we hold our noses and check out what either side is likely to shovel onto us in the weeks to come, let’s look at the facts on the ground:

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Dick Cheney once again is flexing his phenomenal abilities to blow the tradition of philosophy away by proving a positive with a negative, as he today asserted that Iran is likely to be developing nuclear weapons. Cheney’s evidence? The National Intelligence Estimate that declared that they likely were not.

Speaking in Oman, a U.S.-allied Arab monarchy and neighbor of Iran’s, Cheney told ABC News, “The important thing to keep in mind is the objective that we share with many of our friends in the region, and that is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilizing for the entire area.”

“What it (the NIE) says is that they have definitely had in the past a program to develop a nuclear warhead; that it would appear that they stopped that weaponization process in 2003. We don’t know whether or not they’ve restarted,” he said.

“What we do know is that they had then, and have now, a process by which they’re trying to enrich uranium, which is the key obstacle they’ve got to overcome in order to have a nuclear weapon,” he added. “They’ve been working at it for years.”

In sum, Cheney is reminding us that Iran has the intention of being a nuclear armed power. He just wants to make sure everybody keeps their powder dry. Surely, stirring up a proper brew of fear to inebriate world opinion and get it more compliant toward taking a hard line against Iran has nothing to do with it.

One would almost think that Cheney is ignorant of the new round of sanctions likely to pass against Iran - sanctions that are to be imposed due to increasingly stringent levels of review applied to the nation. Iran’s shady behavior in the past, such as it is, has merited thorough international attention, and that is what it’s getting. Not much of the American public is aware of this. Surely, Cheney is. Nevertheless, to hear him tell it, Oman and the Arab states good - read: stable enough due to dictatorial control of their people - enough to provide us with bases are the last line against an unfettered beast with an appetite for kilotonnage.

This may seem like not much concern now, but bear in mind the timing, as I mentioned in my prior post about Iraq: The surge is dwindling. This is fortuitous timing. For Iran, it means an opportunity to try to reassert its manipulation of Shia militia elements that it critically lost touch with during the Shia shoot-out between our pals, the Sadr militias, and the pro-Iranian Hakim clans. For the US, it means reminding the American voter who the enemy is, and getting them ready and champing at the bit in case the force needs to be racheted up.

As New Hampshire geared up for the last phase in a brutal battle between the powers that be and the powers that would be, an upstart to our superpower’s influence in the Middle East stepped on the USA’s toes - Iranian speedboats zipping around our warships, practically with “suicide bomber cruise lines” painted on their hulls.

Small Iranian fast boats swarmed around U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, and a heavily accented voice threatened, “I am coming to you. … You will explode after … minutes,” according to a video released by the Pentagon on Tuesday.

The Iranian boats appeared to ignore repeated warnings from the U.S. ships, including horn blasts and radio transmissions.

Despite what those who want to slip off the safeties might think, this isn’t a prelude to an attack; it’s what we and the Soviets used to do to put each other in check on the Chess board of the Cold War - a tactic called “brinksmanship.”

Brinksmanship is basically a display of force with the intention of making the other guy look like he’s blinking or about to swing. It’s a game of chicken; a show of cool. And it’s the best thing Iran has going for it at this point, considering that in real terms it doesn’t even rate when measured against the might of the US - politically, economically or militarily.

It may be the only thing Iran’s political leadership - President Ahmadinajad - has going for him. Since being installed by the radical forces stirred up by America replacing Iran’s regional arch-enemy and next door neighbor, Iraq, Ahmadinajad has shown what kind of poker player he is: The one who keeps a straight face while going all in, time and again. It was all in on the nuclear deal, all in with the holding of British sailors, all in with his radical rhetoric. Bush and Cheney earned him big points by going all in against him on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, and lost with the world community when our NIE stated what the President was being told anyway. But it isn’t just that he’s emboldened by this victory that Ahmadinajad has been stabbing at our ships with speed boats, trying to stir up specters of World War III. It’s also that he’s weaker than ever before.

Iran’s President has lost more real ground from his policies than he’s gained from his brinksmanship. In Iraq, his infiltration of Iranian agents is suffering from regular crackdowns, loss of his control over the Shia militias and the evaporation of Shia-domination over the customary points of Iranian weapons entering Iraq, the police stations. And in Iran, his economic and political policies are judged disastrous - see my previous posts on that. This has led to Iran’s Ayatollahs distancing their support - not dispensing it - from Ahmadinajad.

Like the Cardinals of the Medieval Ages, Iran’s Ayatollahs are not so much the embodiment of theological fervor as they are the last word in political pragmatism - the “real power behind the throne”. They know that though he grabs headlines, Ahmadinajad has not helped but has hurt Iran.

In the past, when Mr. Ahmadinejad was attacked by his political opponents, criticisms were usually silenced by Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final word on state matters and regularly endorsed the president in public speeches. But that public support has been conspicuously absent in recent months.

There are numerous possible reasons for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s loss of support, but analysts here all point to one overriding factor: the United States National Intelligence Estimate last month, which said Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure. The intelligence estimate sharply reduced the threat of a military strike against Iran, allowing the Iranian authorities to focus on domestic issues, with important parliamentary elections looming in March.

“Now that Iran is not under the threat of a military attack, all contradictions within the establishment are surfacing,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economic and political analyst. “The biggest mistake that Americans have constantly made toward Iran was adopting radical approaches which provided the ground for radicals in the country to take control.”

Much like his counterpart in the US, President Ahmadinajad has tried to keep the focus on war and the threat thereof. Now that this is not working, he’s doing all he can to keep tension levels high. After all, it looks good when you’re the pint-size who throws mud in a giant’s eye and makes him blink. Fortunately for him - and unfortunately for Americans - the leadership in the White House is ready to build Iran up into a giant.

“It is a dangerous situation,” President Bush said in a White House news conference. “They should not have done it, pure and simple. . . . I don’t know what their thinking was, but I’m telling you what my thinking was. I think it was a provocative act…

“Iran was a threat. Iran is a threat. And Iran will continue to be a threat if they are allowed to learn how to enrich uranium,” he said.

Both sides want to look like the nemesis of the other. But it is important for analysts and average Americans alike to keep in mind that only /one/ side gains in stature from being cast in a staredown. The real threat of Iran at this point is that it distracts us from the more critical, more complex threats that it is our duty to tackle.

New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist and global resident genius, Thomas Friedman, wrote a recent column detailing what the intercepted National Intelligence Estimate of Iran might look like. While tongue in cheek, the piece has some truly brilliant insights.

“Yes, our last I.N.I.E. in 1990 concluded that after the collapse of communism, America was on track to become the world’s sole superpower and most compelling role model for Muslim youth — including our own. We were wrong. We now have “high confidence” that America is on a path of self-destruction.”

The brilliance of Friedman - for those who haven’t read any of his work to have it summarized for them - is that the man thinks not in political terms, but in the ready, clean machinery of economic terms. There is no notion of the idealistic to his argument; power matters, the market matters, even values only have worth so far as they are a commodity. In fact, his observations on what role “values” - as defined by the political dialogue here in America - have are apt as well:

“…at a time when America’s bridges, roads, airports and Internet bandwidth have fallen behind other industrial powers, including China, we believe that the U.S. opposition to higher taxes — and the fact that the primary campaigns have focused largely on gay marriage, flag-burning and whether the Christian Bible is the literal truth — means it is “highly unlikely” that America will arrest its decline…

Our intel analysts are baffled that the leading Democrat, Mrs. Clinton, no longer believes in globalization and the leading Republican, Mr. Huckabee, never believed in evolution.”

Satire is often regarded as the most offensive form of criticism. This is, perhaps, because it is the most unvarnished truth - even the veneer of respect is not afforded to its target. That Mrs. Clinton might run a better “horse race” by dint of her debating tempo or consistency of empty message is not something to be admired, or even considered tolerable; Mr. Huckabee’s mythology is not regarded as quaint. The harm of those attitudes is starkly evident.

As an overall assessment of what the real threats and challenges are, the article is a more clarid assessment than any sober soundbite regurgitated by a network telecast talking head. Here, seen through our enemy’s eyes, the stakes are made clear, the rules defined, and, though a good laugh is the only sure result of reading this article, the call to action is raised loud enough to drown out the sea of useless blathering.

While we’re raising a hue and cry about one radical, rogue-state Islamist dictator pursuing nukes, the United States has given a nod of approval to the nuclear ambitions of an even scarier radical, rogue-state Islamist dictator. Libya has made arrangements to rake in some serious nuclear technology from their new pal, Sarkozy’s France - which made a deliberate point of leaving its human rights minister at home while visiting Tripoli. And, citing Libya as an example of a nation returning to the fold of the civilized world, the US administration has given its blessing.

“In light of Libya’s historic decision in 2003 to rid itself of its WMD programs, we expect any cooperation with Libya on a peaceful secure and responsible use of nuclear power to be consistent with the highest standard of non-proliferation,” said Kurtis Cooper, a State Department spokesman.

France announced plans to sell nuclear reactors to Libya as well as 10 billion euros of trade deals, as President Nicolas Sarkozy welcomed Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi on Monday for a five-day visit.

The United States announced last year a full normalization of ties, lifting Libya from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism and raising diplomatic relations to the level of ambassadors.

For those not up to speed on the dealings of autocratic third world thugs, Libya is hardly the developing nation equivalent of a hardened con who finds Christ behind bars and goes on to rehabilitate inner city youth. When we needed to talk with Filipino Islamists back in 2002, we called Libya up as the interlocutor. Libya is prominent in the human trafficking trade. Its human rights record is rated absolute lowest, with torture and indefinite detentions not infrequent.

So why is the Bush administration letting this deal go through - even condoning it - while saying in the same breath of similarly savage Iran:

“Iran is dangerous, and they’ll be even more dangerous if they learn how to enrich uranium,” Bush said. “So I look forward to working with the president,” Bush said, referring to Napolitano, the Italian leader, “to explain our strategy and to figure out ways we can work together to prevent this from happening for the sake of world peace.”

Bush’s comments amounted to a renewed effort to keep pressure on Iran after the release of last week’s National Intelligence Estimate. That report found that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, and administration officials worry it could weaken their ability to build global pressure on Tehran to stop its uranium enrichment program.

Here we have two “rogue nations” with similar draconian means of maintaining power. Both leaders say offensive and threatening things. Both nations are seeking nuclear technology, and both halted their nuclear weapons programs around the same time - though both have reason, means and tendency to conceal such programs. Why favor one over the other?

The answer is purely regional - a pattern simple and inevitable as a chessboard. In the case of Iran, its location next to Iraq and near Saudi Arabia, destines it to be our rival in the Middle East. In the case of Libya, it is relatively unopposed in North Africa: It is an economic powerhouse compared to overpopulated and underdeveloped Egypt, and rolls in resources and swanky geography compared to Morocco or Algeria. Iran has U.S. bases on its border to contend with. Libya is isolated in a sea of nations putatively neutral to the States. Iran is in a hot war with us. Libya just fences WMD and intelligence for terrorists.

So now, when you’re wondering why some in our political dialogue are gnashing their teeth over Ahmadinjad’s nuclear schemes - I even saw a comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which an NIE in ‘62 failed to predict - but ignoring or just shrugging at Khadafi’s, you know why. It’s not the stability of the leader. It’s not affection for America or our values. It certainly isn’t morality.

It’s who we can do business with, and who we need to put out of business.

Happy Holidays - I’ve returned after my long hiatus of backbreaking labor, moving and general disaffection with the world at large. And I should note that the world didn’t help me with any of those concerns this sluggish, cyclical November. The news was as drab and empty as my new apartment. But lo, a new month has begun, and with it, some signs that things worth writing about are happening to occupy the increasingly ample writing time of my days.

So here we have it, loyal readers - A “How De Do” list of headlines that keep me warm at night during those cold Southern California nights:

First and foremost, there’s now a Web site devoted to holding Hilary accountable for her feeble jabs at fellow Democrats. Barack Obama is graciously hosting it, as he’s the one most of the lunges are aimed at. This record of ripostes has among its entries her griping about Iran, gay rights and, of course, the all-time classic accusation that Obama was calculating his Presidential bid as a cold-blooded kindergartener.

You know Christmas is coming when you get the gift of fruit cake, I tell you.

Yes, the news media seems to have become serious about shoving Hilary in front of its bus’ newscycles. After extolling her bravery and acumen for emotional manipulation lost its luster with the press-purchasing public, they actually began commenting on the inaccuracies, grim implications and general blandness of her statements as a candidate. Then came the record of coercion of the press, ruthless control of her records and surprisingly sloppy oversight of her donors. Next thing you know, the blood is in the water.

It is surely too late to pop the champagne. A lot of people want Hillary to win, and the media has yet to decide what story it wants to tell - the one where the charismatic Kennedy-come-lately Obama rises above the establishment wreck of the Clinton campaign while the media sings “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead”, or the one where the media-money darling, Hillary takes her rivals’ best shots and still wins out because despite an abyssmal voting record, she’s got moxie and knows how to win hearts. Yet I reserve the right to have some glimmer of hope for the political process, and right now, that hope is leading in Iowa.

And speaking of Hope, Mike Huckabee is also leading in Iowa, suggesting this race may get a /whole/ lot more interesting than I could’ve expected. Nothing will chase the mid-election season clouds away like a bass-playing wiseacre with Nanny State politics and fundamentalist beliefs!

And, speaking of the apocalypse…

Our second joyful holiday news item is that someone finally wrenched the mike away from the White House long enough to give it to the CIA and US intelligence community. For months, we’ve been drinking a witches’ brew of paranoia and dark portent from our ever-vigilant Commander-in-Chief about Iran’s nuclear program, as all the while the fine print on the articles noted that his intelligence personnel were telling him to settle down. At last, the National Intelligence Estimate rolled off the presses and stated definitively that Iran is /not/ an immediate threat, and that all indications are that it’s been largely on the up-and-up about the civilian application of its program.

“…in a finding likely to surprise U.S. friends and foes alike, the latest NIE concluded: “We do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”

That marked a sharp contrast to an intelligence report two years ago that stated Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons.”

That having been said, Iran is still proceeding to acquire and implement nuclear technology, and whether those technologies have immediate military applications or not, they are still steps along the path to nuclear armament. The question then becomes whether they’re illegal or not, and whether Iran has any real incentive to use them to threaten the US. At least, for now, the mushroom cloud has been crammed back into the smoking gun, the bogeyman back into the closet, and Dick Cheney’s opinions back into the padded cell and out of the public square.

If anything, this report indicates that sanctions do indeed work. The NIE, after all, switched dramatically over the time period of the internationally-backed sanctions we initiated. All indications are that we did something good, and it worked.

And as a fringe benefit, it seems only Bush and conservatives in Israel - the two parties in the globe that need as much ammunition against Iran as they can get - remain convinced that Iran is going full throttle for a nuclear nightmare. One hopes this will further damage the credibility of the Israeli intelligence services. Then, maybe, our media will start listening to the Knessetand Haaretz, rather than whatever reactionary, uniformed flavor of the month the conservative Israeli Defense Force stands behind a microphone in order to justify our unconditional support and billions of military aid for his country.

And, finally, the Teddy Bear Terror is over.

Yes, the latest installment of the increasingly assinine and alarming outrages in the Muslim world has run its course. The British teacher who thought it would be kosher for a kid to name his stuffed bear after himself - Mohammed - only to find it led to roaring throngs demanding her death by beheading is home safe.

After a reunion with her children John and Jessica at Heathrow, the 54-year-old teacher spoke of her shock and terror after being arrested and accused of insulting Islam for allowing her pupils to call a teddy bear Mohammed.

But despite her ordeal, Mrs Gibbons praised the people of Sudan, stressing that no one should be put off working there.

She even pointed out there was a vacancy for a teacher in her old job.

“I am very sorry to leave,” she said.

And yet I, Mrs. Gibbons, am rapidly running out of patience with Sudan. Darfur is bad enough. But legal action that makes the reaction over the Danish cartoons of the prophet look rational, even right, by comparison? It may be a straw compared to hundreds of thousands dead and raped by government-backed Islamic militias, but it could be a final straw all the same.

But in the spirit of the holidays, it seems like everyone - from the government in Khartoum, to the western press, to kindly Mrs. Gibbons and innocent little Mohammed - are letting this one blow over. So it will be back to business: Our slowly trudging towards a modicum of security for the agonized millions in Sudan while China grips the whole region like a pearl in its dragon claws.

Xin Nian Kuai Le, everybody! It’s good to be back!

Anxiety-related illnesses are spiking all over our nervous nation, with insomnia now joining the ranks of obesity, hypertension and the popularity of reality TV shows. What’s got everyone staying up so late to bite their nails?

Forty-eight percent of Americans say they’re more stressed now than they were five years ago, and the same percent report regularly lying awake at night because of stress, according to a new study by the American Psychological Association.

…So what is it we’re worrying about while we stare at the ceiling all night? Primarily two things: money and work, the main woes for nearly 75 percent of Americans. That’s way up from 59 percent of us stressed out over those two things a year ago.

Perhaps not surprisingly, that percentage of the population correlates well with the segment that has had their standard of living dive in this “boom” economy. Yet immediate, personal concerns set aside, it’s hard to ignore the aggravation of worsening environmental factors. Five years ago, we were not yet in Iraq, not yet dreading global warming, even though we were - universally - in a post-9/11-and-government-defecit-inspired economic slump.

Even our Vice-Commander-In-Chief, Dick Cheney, seems to be afflicted by disturbed sleep patterns. Listening to the boring account of the record wildfires in California, he nodded off on camera.

What could be depriving the penultimate leader of the free world of his necessary rest? Answers to that are in the headlines, and are most thoroughly explored in a New Yorker article this month by Seymour Hersh, “Shifting Targets“. In one ominous word, Cheney’s burly boogeyman is, “Iran”:

At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.” The former intelligence official added, “There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”

As anybody listening to the race can tell you, most every leading Democrat supports a military option to limit Iran’s nuclear program. But apparently that either doesn’t pass muster with Cheney or doesn’t affect his feeling that it’s the current administration alone that would be - and thus must be - aggressive enough to launch or support a pre-emptive military strike on an Iranian nuclear program.

If I could take Mr. Cheney by the hand, I would sit him down and soothe him by mention of Mitt Romney. Romney is now leading significantly in New Hampshire, finally stirring that conservative base that he’s so ruthlessly courted by antics like throwing his pal Larry Craig under a speeding bus of moral judgment, declaring himself born-again Pro-Life and overall being a prudish prick whenever possible. Should Romney knock noggins with fellow frontrunner Clinton, chances are he could snap her over-moneyed, under-spined support and pull off a victory. And where would that put him so far as pushing the Big Red Button against Iran is concerned?

Romney, who has been advocating a hard line against Iran throughout his presidential campaign, said military action would be necessary if severe economic and diplomatic sanctions don’t convince Iranian leaders to abandon pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

“If for some reasons they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that’s available to us,” Romney told a crowd of doctors and nurses during a question period that followed a health care speech.

He added: “That’s an option that’s on the table. And it’s is not something which we’ll spell out specifically. I really can’t lay out exactly how that would be done, but we have a number of options from blockade to bombardment of some kind. And that’s something we very much have to keep on the table, and we will ready ourselves to be able to take, because, frankly, I think it’s unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.”

Doesn’t that sound butch enough? Perhaps not for Cheney, who has been fiercely at odds with a CIA that insists on downplaying Iran as even a potential threat. Cheney sees the Iranian nuclear weapon capability as a certainty, and thus sees America pre-emptively attacking it as a quid pro quo.

Given this, expect to stay glued to your television sets this spring, to watch a new round of pretty lights liven things up in the Middle East.

It’s now all but official: We’re going to attack Iran in the not-too-distant future. That’s what President Bush indicated this morning in an address to the world: With Orwellian doublethink logic - the same that goaded the country into Iraq - the President’s argument went that in order to prevent World War III, we would have to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons at any cost, even by going to war.

“We’ve got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel,” he said. “So I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

So the premise is that in order to prevent disastrously widening the war on their terms, we best widen it first. Setting that dangerous policy aside for a moment, it takes a lot of hostile assumptions to get to Bush’s perspective at all.

The first assumption is an easy one, considering the media is parroting it loudly and incessantly: The assertion that Ahmadinejad wants to turn Israel into a seething nuclear soup. That’s a misunderstanding, and not a minor one - not a “shrug your shoulders”, “what’s the difference” mistranslation. It’s that little distinction between accusing him of advocating anti-Semitic genocide and advocating a position even some Israeli parliament members support: Namely, Ahmadinejad’s position is not “wiping Israel from the map” with some impossible shower of IRBMs he does not and will never have - it’s that Arabs in Israel should be given voting rights and should then force a referendum to how Israel should be constituted: As a segregated Jewish state with a non-voting population or not.

TIME: You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?

Ahmadinejad: People in the world are free to think the way they wish. We do not insist they should change their views. Our position toward the Palestinian question is clear: we say that a nation has been displaced from its own land. Palestinian people are killed in their own lands, by those who are not original inhabitants, and they have come from far areas of the world and have occupied those homes. Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way. Do you have any other suggestions?

Even taking that into consideration though, we see that Mahmoud is no friend to the ADL and Likud Party. There’s no doubt that Iran considers its chief rival in the region to be Israel, and vice versa. But to get to where President Bush wants people to go takes a further assumption - namely, that Iran’s building a nuclear weapon.

Iran certainly has incentive to do so. After all, Israel - which attacks without warning or recompense - has nuclear weapons. Being “the other nuclear armed state” would give it clout, which it certainly wants. And, lastly, as North Korea has proven, once you have nukes, you can do practically anything you want, even extorting the US. But just how close is Iran to getting one of these bad boys?

We’ll mark off the steps. First, they need a nuclear plant. That’s allegedly where they want to start - getting a nuclear plant to overcome their sole, crippling energy concern: That even though they have lots of oil, they have few means to refine it, and so are suffering the same energy crisis as any other nation that’s not weathly nearly beyond measure. Once they have the plant, they need to equip it with the means of producing weapons-grade fissionable material. After that’s done, they need a bomb program. And once, at last, they have a bomb - mind you, this would take several years - they need to get the delivery systems. This entire process is extremely expensive in terms of treasure and time.

“Iran does not constitute a certain and immediate threat for the international community,” ElBaradei said in an interview with Italian RAI television. The IAEA director called for international leaders to “give peace a chance,” underlining that no hidden radioactive substances or underground production sites had yet been found. However, he admitted: “Iran has not yet completely revealed all the aspects of its nuclear programme.”

Here we are again: The IAEA urges peace and says the threat’s ages away, and Bush and other Western leaders act as though a gun’s to our head with the hammer cocked. And most importantly, as with Saddam’s WMD program, just about every intelligence source without bias doubts the claims that Iran’s doing this. The only reason America believes this is what’s going on is because the White House has been saying, over and over and over, that this is the case. So while, for the reasons above, it’s not entirely unreasonable to say that Iran may want such a program, we are not nearly at the crisis point the Administration wants to put us at. As with Saddam’s “smoking gun”, it’s a matter of the President and his cadre insisting on something only they and a few others are supposedly convinced of, for reasons that are in no way immediately important beyond furthering their political doctrine.

This brings us to the last assumption we must make in order to accept - as many frightened Americans will - the perspective Bush spoke from this morning. We’ve covered that Ahmadinejad doesn’t want to annihilate all Jews in a fiery blast. We’ve covered that we’re years, billions and a whole of wariness away from even a potential fiery blast. The final assumption is that any of those conditions would leave to World War III.

Even if Ahmadinejad wanted to incinerate Israel, why would he do so when suicide would be the result? Does anyone have a doubt that an attack against Israel or the US - especially one with nuclear weapons - would lead to anything else besides Iran’s total devastation by our nuclear arsenal? Even if Iran was stone nuts enough to do it, that “war” would be a very brief exchange indeed - about the time it would take for two fistfuls of Titan class ICBMs to travel from silos in the southeast seaboard to Tehran.

No, the real World War III would have to involve the world - and that would not be too far fetched. Bush has already led us from the rosy glow of liberalist 9/11-era global sympathy - back when Iranians wept on America’s behalf, terrorism was a law-enforcement issue, the world thought us unbeatable and Russia was declawed by the disarmament process - to an era where our nation is loved but our politics are almost universally despised. The ABM Treaty is gone, our war chest and military reserves are gone, and Russia is resurgent, shaking hands with Mahmoud and stomping its feet on Serbia’s behalf again. For an actual world war, we are busily brewing a lot of the proper ingredients.

Avoiding World War III should concern us. And unilateral action, overstating threats, twisting rhetoric to the end of terrorizing the public and fomenting fear of another pre-emptive war abroad is just the opposite of “avoiding.”

Turkey’s government is once again being crushed between Iraq and the hard place of pressure from the west. The attacks on Turkey by the relentless PKK - Kurdish rebels in Turkey with contentious but nevertheless real ties with the ruling Kurdish party in Iraq - have its citizens rightly demanding those responsible be pursued into Iraq and neutralized. The US - which has always regarded Kurdish Iraq as a model of stability in a crucible of strife - has rightly demanded Turkey not make the situation more chaotic by invading. Both sides have good, urgent arguments, but only one can prevail. Which is the right course?

It may surprise some to hear that neither case will be a disaster if handled well, and that both have their merits. If anything, Turkish intervention would have some positives to it that have been lacking from the Iraq War:

First, it would be a Muslim nation involved in fighting terrorism in Iraq. This is something that is long overdue - the view of the world being that Iraq is a western, Christian crusade to institute a vassal state in Islam’s backyard. If Turkey comes in on the side of battling terror, it looks less like a White House delusion.

Secondly, Turkey has significant amounts of troops to devote to this task and, without Saddam to worry about, might actually stand to wipe out the PKK. Whatever the case, al-Qaeda’s use of Kurdistan’s bandit kingdom as a refuge from the surge will be further abbreviated and the thorn of the PKK could be plucked from the common side of Turkey, the Iraqi parliament and the US. Considering how shoe-string troop counts are in Iraq, why not welcome in the second-largest NATO army?

The answer to that brings us to the negatives of a Turkish intervention - the first being that the roads Turkey’s 50,000+ troops will be tromping down will be no longer available to our own effort. It would be a logistical constriction for our military and would add to the confusion Iraq already suffers. This would be especially true if the Turkish military holds to its word, as it has said:

Cicek said Turkey’s sole target, if its troops entered northern Iraq, would be the PKK militants, about 3,000 of whom are believed to be hiding there.

Combating any and all terrorist elements in the tangled web of mercenary northern Iraq is much more realistic and achievable than trying to sift out Kurdish Maoist Nationalists from All-Use Religious Fanatic Al-Qaeda Fighters. These groups hardly share the same bed, but outlaws are outlaws, arms traders are arms traders, and ducking one group while hunting the other will not be easy. It will also mean we and the Turks will have to be careful not to trip over one another, rather than aim to work together.

Turkish intervention is one heavy, edged pendulum, and could certainly swing either way - good or ill. It’s up to the US to encourage cooperation with our NATO ally if they feel that they’re forced to step in, rather to ignore or hinder it for the sake of the Iraqi government. For, regardless of the potential ill of the intervention, this much is certain: Security for that sector can’t be left in the hands of Baghdad. When Turkey last seriously considered stepping over that brittle border, the US defused the situation by having the Iraqi goverment sign a commitment to break the back of the PKK. Absolutely nothing came of it.

And yet the response from Washington last week was merely more of the same:

“PKK violence not only threatens Turkey, but also undermines the security and welfare of Iraq,” U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement issued Monday evening. “Turkey and Iraq have vowed to collaborate in the fight against terrorism … We call on Iraqi authorities to take effective measures against the PKK.”

It seems a situation where again we are getting the back of the Iraqis and again they cannot measure up to what’s demanded of them. Considering car bombings still shiver Baghdad with regularity and al-Qaeda is not yet entirely contained - not to mention the larger threat of sectarian insurgents - how can we expect the Iraqi security forces to deal with the PKK, one of the largest terrorist factions in the world? Put simply, we can’t - not at this point.

Asking Turkey to wait extends this situation at the expense of Turkish lives, which the PKK are not loath to take en masse. Allowing Turkey to intervene means risking a much greater destabilization. But with the region already being destablized as the PKK opens its attacks against Iran and Iran lashes back. Waiting while the Iraqis get their act together under the miserable leadership of the Dawah party may not be an option for long.

And Washington may soon find itself in a sandwich of its own - having to decide whether it wants a NATO partner with an Army larger than any other hunting terrorists in Iraq, or Iran.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad arrived in New York City yesterday for a visit that, by all apparent intentions, was a mission of outreach and peace. In response, America by and large only extended its defining freedom of expression to him so far as it allowed him to be berated and humiliated. Was this a fitting response to, as the President of the University that invited Ahmadinejad to speak, Lee Bollinger characterized him, “a petty and cruel dictator“?

Many, throughout the political spectrum in America, would argue that it was. Ahmadinejad, after all, is by no means a progressive leader of his people. Under his watch, the Iranian police have cracked down on “morality” related offenses - violations of fundamentalist Islamic practice. Freedoms of expression and action have been curtailed. And he is, by all indications, waging a proxy war against us that now constitutes the majority of our casualties in Iraq. So why not roast him?

It is not regardless of these reasons, but because of them, that America’s reaction to Iran’s President was not only wrong, but shamefully wrong.

First, there is the matter of integrity. America holds many of its values sacred and essential to its character, but none so highly as the first entry on its Bill of Rights - the freedom of speech. That is a principle we support throughout the globe - most of the time - and rightly defend at home. But doing things like refusing Ahmadinejad’s overtures to plant a wreath at the WTC attack site or saying that he should not be allowed to speak at Columbia is an assault on that notion of free expression - on the notion that only by acceptance of diversity of views can we achieve a true acceptance of humanity. Nevertheless, that is precisely the face we showed the world, left and right wing, when he arrived.

We were, in essence, demonstrating that our values are only as strong as the latest outside pressure on us - the latest hype, the latest conflict. We support free speech up until when it’s inconvenient or offensive. Then we, like any powerful nation feeling stung or endangered, recoil and shut down from the objectionable idea.

We’re better than that. Furthermore, we need to be able to act in keeping with a better future in order to create a better future.

This is the second reason that flatly denying Ahmadinejad’s efforts to extend his gestures of compassion and his views to the US, or even using that extension as an opportunity to insult him, was tragically wrong. The old adage that you cannot choose your enemies only goes so far. By and large, you do choose your enemies, by acting better than the sorry circumstances of conflict that you’ve been drawn into with them. Until you act in peace and friendship, you cannot enable peace and friendship.

This is not to say we should not be on the offensive against Iran’s incursions in Iraq, should not curtail their nuclear program aggressively until they allow for more thorough inspections and should not maintain diplomatic pressure for human rights’ sake. I have always been in favor of those activities of late. It is, instead, to recognize that if you act hostile to someone, it gives them cause for hostility; if you act in friendly communication, it gives cause for friendly communication. You don’t have to be Christ-like in all that you do. A meek America may not inherit the earth. But when someone extends a hand, slapping it away or spitting on it inspires a certain acrimony. If we don’t realize that Iran’s President and many Iranians won’t see it that way, then we’re assuming that Ahmadinejad is the one who’s Christ-like, constantly turning cheeks until he submits entirely.

That’s a pretty crazy assumption, though he has consistently made efforts towards peace and communication. Most notably, he sent an eighteen-page open letter to Bush, expressing his views on the relations between the US and Iran. Some of those views were offensive to the common American perception of its nation, but should we have expected any less? It seems more remarkable that many were not.

Many people dismiss both the recent visit and the open letter as merely political ploys. That could indeed have been Ahmadinejad’s motives. But if we dismiss them as political ploys, we dismiss any potential for making something more of them. We have to keep in mind that at the same time President Reagan was denouncing the USSR as the evil empire, fighting proxy wars against them and amassing a prodigious nuclear stockpile directly against them, he was doing all he could to visit with Soviet nations and Soviet leaders in order to cultivate friendly dialogue. Why are we not receptive to efforts to do the same from Iran?

Are we simply so confident that things must go towards war?

If not, we are going to have to be brave enough to reach out and take an enemy’s extended hand for the sake of peace. We have to voice our own views - not in a hostile manner like the “jeering” crowd at Columbia, that insulted a foreign power’s president for ten solid minutes before he even spoke, but in a confident and positive way. We will, in essence, have to be better than our enemies.

I like to think we can.

At this point, it is becoming increasingly evident that the broader Middle East - Iran to Israel - is gearing up for war. Every major party is flashing their guns and talking loud. And with the situation in Iraq continuing to circle the drain - thanks in no small part to Iran’s intervention there - the value to the West of winning back some strategic cred by putting a thermobaric boot to Iran’s nuclear program is climbing.

It has been an interesting waltz to say the least. While it had been fomenting for awhile, tracking the events of this September alone shows how each side is using the actions of the other to escalate, all the while speaking as though they want only peace.

The month began with an ill-timed olive branch - a gesture by the ailing Ahmadinajad government to suggest it isn’t the vitriolic monstrosity that the West and its own inflammatory rhetoric has suggested it to be: They announced the opening of a Jewish center in Tehran. As with Bush’s AIDS relief entitlement, nobody abroad really noticed this sign of compassion, and most of those that did considered it fake. Multi-culti Mullahs are hard to swallow, I admit. Then again, we create the future we decide to believe in.

Keeping that same principle in mind, it was vocally announced that the Pentagon had drafted up a warplan to comprehensively annihilate Iran’s major military installations in a “three day blitz.” The plan itself isn’t nearly as significant as the announcement of it. We draw up plans to powderize our adversaries quite often. Rarely do we make sure everyone in the world knows. And, as with the build-up to war with Iraq, we heard from a familiar cast of characters:

First, the IAEA, whose measured and conservative reports of improvement seem just tailored to offend the five-minute-news, shock-scare-drunk sensibilities of American audiences:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power

And from the Achmed Chalabi du jour: “Resistance fighters” who, though they have likely not been back to their country since cellphones weighted eight pounds, claim their intelligence is most accurate:

Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”

What isn’t mentioned is that these sleuths-in-exile are listed by us as a Foreign Terrorist Organization - an inconvenient classification when you’re using them as a public justification for possible military action.

Iran’s response was to announce that they’re not the only ones with WMD in the region, pointing their finger squarely at Israel.

He indicated that countries like Syria, Lebanon and Egypt have been reluctant to join the Organisation of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mainly due to the Israeli stance. Israel has signed the Chemical Weapons Convention but has not ratified it yet.

Again, this attitude may sound like more Zionist-bashing, but when dealing with the actions of other nations, it’s best to consider things from their perspective. The score board reads clear to Iran:

Attacks on Iran - 2
Attacks by Iran (publicly) - 0
Wars started by Israel - 4
Wars won by Israel - 5

So, if you were faced with that kind of an opponent, maybe you wouldn’t be so far off the mark by declaring they’re dangerous. But the US’ strategic interests aren’t seen as being furthered by having a balance of WMD power in the Middle East, and so everybody outside the Arab world ignored this and bit their nails about the amount of centrifuges Iran has - which is, according to some sources, quite a bit.

No more than a day later, Israeli jets slashed through Syrian airspace to the Iranian border, dropped munitions and withdrew. The world journalistic community is still scratching its head as to what this meant. Some have theorized that it was to deter the Syrians from enhancing their WMD arsenal, particularly with nuclear assistance from North Korea, who was spotted delivering materials to them. The most likely explanation, however, is the most obvious: Israel was testing to see how a bombing run against Iran would work out.

“Of course Israel wants to let the Americans do that,” said Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

“But if we are left alone, the Israeli army is preparing to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat - if the political level allows it to - and this could have been a part of that.”

Nothing was done to quell the tensions surrounding this technical act of war. Instead, the rest of the West stepped to the fore to flex its might against Iran. France, which has a firm financial stake in Iran but which also has a fairly anti-Muslim leader, directly threatened force from its highest office if Iran didn’t demonstrate full compliance with international bodies in regulating its nuclear program. Sarkozy himself issued the statements, and they were more for the sake of the US and Israel than any Gallic agitation with Iran:

Sarkozy’s comments might well have been intended to alert Tehran that the leaders of US and Israel regard the so-called US-Iran nuclear standoff as an international problem that requires urgent solution.

Furthermore, US intelligence stated that Hizballah would likely launch an offensive against the US if Iran or its interests threatened. Mind you that this is the same group that the White House was, not long ago, immediately afraid of obtaining a nuclear device to use against us. And again, the significance of this isn’t the report itself, but the release of the report. In military diplomacy, statements are part of the arsenal. Specifically, they’re the trigger.

Iran mulled this over for awhile. France was the only one really keeping the rhetoric high, largely because Sarkozy wants to restore its military and diplomatic prestige. Then Iran issued a statement that, if Israel attacked it, it would respond with bombing.

“We have drawn up a plan to strike back at Israel with our bombers if this regime (Israel) makes a silly mistake,” Iran’s deputy air force commander, Gen. Mohammad Alavi, said in an interview with the semiofficial Fars news agency.

Trusting that the American public had forgotten about the Israeli jets breaking into Syrian airspace and bombing on Iran’s border - or simply did not care - the US issued a counter statement calling Iran’s comments “unprovoked” and “almost provocative”, “bellicose and hateful language“, and so forth. They also said, in the same breath, that the US is not taking military options off of the table when considering how to deal with Iran.

And, all across America, worried citizens came home from their 9-to-5, glanced at the one-minute spot about Iran’s latest bluster and the grim response from the US, and lost a bit more hair or sleep.

Things have only become more tense. Analysts are now talking about how Syria’s considering the Golan Heights to be a militarily viable target. More speculation about North Korean involvement in the region bubbles about. And the visit of Iran’s President to the UN in the near future has politicians here snarling. He’s even been called “Iran’s Hitler” - actually a bit of an apt analogy, but important in this context primarily due to the fact that Saddam was compared to Hitler as well.

Just today, Israel showed the world that it’s at the ready, scrambling its jets for the press to ponder about and the radars of its regional enemies to marvel at.

Further evidence that it’s going to be a hot time in Tehran this winter can be found at this excellent article: 10 Indications That The U.S. Is Planning Military Action Against Iran.